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Some weeks the shit's piling up so fast you have to get the shovel
out a few days early. I have little doubt that there will be this much
more by the weekend. Less sure I have the time and energy to keep up
the pace.

Trump said great things in the speech about infrastructure. But all
that we've seen so far is an infrastructure plan that's a joke. He
said something nice about immigrants, but his ICE people are out
rounding up people who are beloved in their communities. He said
nice things about innovation and research, but the real-life
implications of what we've seen of the budget will have no money
to speak of for any of those kinds of things.

Michelle Chen: Donald Trump's War on Science: Mostly focused
on environmental science, which is a big enough subject, but most
likely nowhere near the sum. Stiff upper lip at the end: "At the
dawn of the Trumpocene, even under a regime fueled by contempt for
truth, facts will still matter." Even more so laws of physics, such
as the one that points out that every molecule of carbon dioxide
added to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat from sunlight
that is retained by the atmosphere.

Fred Kaplan: Money for Nothing: Trump is following through on his
campaign promise to increase Defense Department spending, submitting a
$54 billion increase over Obama's 2016 budget. Other pieces on the
Defense budget:

Ishaan Tharoor: The Trump presidency ushers in a new age of militarism:
E.g., "Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany did not conquer territory for the
thrill of it; their leaders acted out of perceived desperation, believing
that they were losing a ruthless competition for power and status."
Although the more conventional explanation -- that their leaders were
evil self-aggrandizing sociopaths -- does little to allay our fears
about Trump.

Anne Kim: Why Trumpism Is Here to Stay: The author's antidote is
"broadly shared economic expansion," as this "puts more Americans in
a generous mood." But isn't that one thing that we can be sure will
not happen under Republican rule? After all, their prime directive
is to increase the concentration of wealth among the already rich,
even if that means producing less of it overall. You'd think that
Trump (if not Trumpism) would lose all credibility soon, but for now
they seem to figure they can hang on by decrying the "fake news"
that might rat them out.

Daoud Kuttab: US and Israel join forces to bury Palestinian statehood:
A point made clear by Netanyahu's very early visit to see Trump, who
knows little about the conflict, has no respect for America's customary
(albeit hapless) advocacy of international law, nor any concern that
the world view the US as a fundamentally friendly world power. Still,
could be worse: in 2008 Israel feared that Obama might make a serious
effort to pressure Israel into accepting a two-state partition, so
started a war against Gaza. Netanyahu knows better than to fear Trump,
who's so eager to please he's willing to do things that Israel only
says they want (tearing up the Iran deal, moving the US embassy to
Jerusalem) that he needs to be gently nudged back to sanity. Still,
Netanyahu has a problem: for the next four years, no one will look
toward the US to ineptly muddle up the "peace process" -- the idea
that Trump will be "an honest broker" is beyond laughable -- but in
the meantime people (especially in Europe) will see Israel as it
actually is: a deeply racist society and unjust oppressor state.

Jennifer Rubin: Why Jeff Sessions is in deep trouble: Sure, he
met with Russians, and sure, he lied about it. The former bothers
me far less than Nixon's efforts to sabotage Vietnam War negotiations
in 1968, or even Reagan's ploy to keep Iran from releasing hostages
to Jimmy Carter. After all, what Trump's people were telling Putin
is "keep your cool and don't overreact to Obama's sanctions -- when
we win we'll be more reasonable." There are innumerable things wrong
with Trump and his posse, but his Russia stance was actually saner
than what Obama and Clinton were offering. Of course, it's hard not
to applaud any scandal that undermines Jeff Sessions, but I'd rather
focus on real reasons for getting rid of him, like
Sophia Tesfaye: Jeff Sessions drops DOJ lawsuit against discriminatory
Texas voter ID case, reverses 6 years of litigation. Not that I
condone his lying, but it's no victory for progressives if the only
lying anyone gets sacked over is offending the neocon anti-Russia lobby
(cf. Flynn, Manafort, etc.) -- in fact, it's fucked up.

By the way, see
Glenn Greenwald: The New Yorker's Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable
Truths About US and Russia. Number one on that list is how much more
hawkish against Russia Clinton was than Obama. Way back I argued that she
would lose if people came to perceive her as the more dangerous warmonger,
and I think that's a big part of what's happening. Of course, her fans
didn't think that, nor did more critically balanced observers like myself,
but all of her campaign talk about "the Commander-in-Chief test" and her
obsession with nuclear launch codes may well have unnerved less informed
voters. In any case, until Democrats get over their obsession with
vanquishing foes abroad and focus on the real ones that are robbing us
bind, they won't be able to mount a credible defense against the class
war the rich are still winning within America.

Reihan Salam: Paul Ryan Could Kill Donald Trump's Political Future:
"If the president accedes to congressional Republicans' wishes to slash
the social safety net, he'll pay a very hefty price." While lots of
liberal-leaning pundits have been imploring the so-called sane regular
Republicans to rein in the patently insane president, I've been saying
all along that the most ominous threat comes from empowering Ryan and
his ilk in Congress -- a perception that is finally beginning to sink
in. For all their bluster, conservatives have always had to fall back
on the promise that their crackpot theories would ultimately be good
for all (well, most) people -- and not just the 1% (give or take a
little) they shill for. Still, now they have enough power to do some
real damage, and the more they exercise that power the more they will
discredit themselves.

Juan Cole: Sorry, Trump, China's cut-back on Coal Dooms Industry:
A few years ago China was poised to build so many coal-fired electricity
generators that it became likely that one nation, at the time a nation
in complete denial about global warming, would wind up frying the rest
of us. Since then at least half of those coal plants have been canceled.
Since then, it's become clear that if you consider the externalities --
which for China includes the good will of other nations fearful of being
fried -- coal is already an inefficient energy source. That's increasingly
obvious in the US as well, even though thanks to fossil fuel industry
clout most of those externalities go uncharged. And the trendline for
coal is getting worse, even with the President and Congress securely
in the industry's pocket.

Stanley L Cohen: Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel: The analogy
hits closer to home than "apartheid" (although that was merely the
South African term for a legal code of segregation inspird by and
borrowed from America's Jim Crow laws). Of course, the analogy is not
quite precise: the US and SA systems were meant primarily to preserve
a low worker caste their respective economies were built on, whereas
the Israeli system seeks to make Palestinian labor (hence Palestinians)
superfluous, and as such is an even more existential threat. Article
does a good job of reminding you not just that separate is inherently
unequal but that segregated systems are sustained with violence and
injustice.

Mark Lawrence Schrad: Vladimir Putin Isn't a Supervillain: This
seems like a fairly realistic evaluation of Russia, after first
positing two strawman arguments and showing how neither is all that
true. I'll add that there are a few countries what once had larger
empires and have never quite shaken the mental habit of thinking
they should still be more powerful than they are: this is true of
Russia and China, would-be regional powers like Iran and Turkey,
and several ostensible US allies (notably Britain, France, and
Saudi Arabia), and if you possess the ability to look cleary in
a mirror, the United States as well. (Germany and Japan were
largely cured of this by the crushing weight of defeat in WWII,
although you see glimpses in, e.g., Germany's role in breaking
up Yugoslavia and Japan's weird dread of North Korea.) What has
thus far passed for Russian aggression has so far been limited
to adopting breakaway regions of now independent former SSRs --
Crimea from Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.
On the other hand, the US has been extending its NATO umbrella
into previously neutral former SSRs, building up its Black Sea
fleet, installing anti-missle systems focused on Russia, and
imposing sanctions to undermine the Russian economy, and trying
to influence elections in places like Ukraine and Georgia to
heighten anti-Russian sentiments. Given all this, who's really
being aggressive?

Of course, were I a Russian, I'm quite certain that I'd have
no shortage of
political disagreements with Vladimir Putin. But the US doesn't
have (or deserve) a say in who runs Russia. At best we can refer
to standards of international law, but only if we ourselves are
willing to live by them -- which, as was made clear by Bush's
refusal to join the ICC we clearly are not. An old adage is that
you should clean up your own house first, and that's the thing
that American politicians should focus on.